Ratio Working Paper No. 318: Trademarks and Appropriability in the Digital Era – Evidences from Swedish Video Games Industry

What role can trademark play in appropriability regime, especially in a digitalized era where many innovations are easy to copy and difficult to protect, and where rapid diffusion is the norm? This study, using the Swedish video games industry as a case, aims to provide some insights and tentative answers to those questions. Combining firm-level interviews, statistical data concerning EUIPO trademarks filed by the Swedish video games industry, we present the quantitative trends of trademarking across this industry sector (i.e. timeline; distribution across technological platforms and firm sizes; correlation with turnover), as well as qualitative explanations for that. This study contributes to a meso-level explanation of the role of trademarks (registrations) in appropriability on the one hand, and to the understanding of the complexity of the general appropriability conditions (and logic) in the Digital Era, on the other.

Long, V. & Domeij, B. (2019). Trademarks and Appropriability in the Digital Era – Evidences from Swedish Video Games Industry. Ratio Working Paper no. 318. Stockholm: Ratio.